Strengths
A strength in a SWOT analysis is something beneficial to the company while being an internal factor that they control. Two strengths of Bed Bath & Beyond are their registry service and personalized products. Bed Bath & Beyond offers their customers wedding, commitment ceremonies, baby, housewarming, anniversary, college, and birthday registry services. A registry is a listing of items, or a “wish-list”, of specific products that other people can purchase for you. An advantage of a registry is that it can be done electronically and is efficient for both the buyer and receiver. It is efficient because it is one central location people can go to purchase specific desired items. Bed Bath & Beyond’s most popular registry service is its wedding registry. It is regarded as the best registry by Kristi Kellog, in her article, “Where to Register: The 50 Best Wedding Registry Sites & Stores”. Kellog states, “When it comes to one-stop shopping convenience, few retailers can beat Bed Bath & Beyond. It’s the perfect place to scan all of your essentials, like housewares, linens, and appliances. And since they offer tons of different brands, you can select must-haves at a range of different price points. Plus, with free announcement cards to tell friends and family where you’ve registered, expert consultant to help you decide which items to pick, and a competition program that lets you purchase your remaining gifts at a discounted price after the big day, the retailer is a
Lowe's is one of the biggest big box retailers in the world today. As a result, the company faces competition from various companies, both directly and indirectly. Two of Lowes’ biggest direct competitors include Home Depot and Wolseley PLC, both of which carry similar products in the home improvement category. Each of these retailer On the other hand, an indirect competitor of Lowe’s is any small construction/repair company. These smaller repair companies are classified as indirect competitors because Lowe’s is known as a retailer for “do-it-yourself” home improvement projects. If a repair company is hired to complete a service, Lowe’s is facing indirect competition.
4. Skilled management, positive cash flow, and well-known brands are examples of which component of the SWOT analysis? Strength
Blocher describes Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis as being able to “identify the critical success factors that the firm must focus on to be successful.” (Blocher, 2013, p. 10) Focusing on the SWOT, Belk focuses their attention on the satisfaction of their guests by developing a brand that had the Southern hospitality trademark. Belk mission is to be the leader in department stores, selling merchandise that meets their customers’ need for fashion, quality, value, and selection offering superior customer service; and to make a reasonable profit.”
Some main strengths of Trader Joe’s are the strong brand image, their employees, organic and private label products, customer loyalty, and offered unique products. Trader Joe’s strong brand image helps them to attract and retain more customers. Their private labels are named according to the background and nationality of food. They offered an extensive line of private label items with brand names such as Trader Joe’s, Trader Ming’s, Trader Jose, Trader Giotto. Due to their strong brand image, they established themselves as a leading retailer of food and non-food items in the US. Americans ranked Trader Joe’s overall as No. 1 retailer in 2013 (Ager & Roberto, 2014). Trader Joe's offered unique and high-quality products from different countries which attract customers to try new items and stocks of 4,000 items, 80% of which bear one of its own brand names. Trader Joe's describes itself as "your neighborhood grocery store" (Wikipedia, Trader Joe’s). Trader Joe’s claimed that 80% of its customers had attended college. The company described its target market as “intelligent, educated, inquisitive individuals” and they reach this customer by opening store among well-educated residents (Ager & Roberto, 2014). Their customers are too loyal towards their brand image so they keep coming back. Instead of targeting all customers, they need to target new customers in order to grow their business and to keep being a leader in the retail industry in the US. And also, their employee are valuable assets of the company, who led them towards the further growth of the company, therefore they are treated fairly and trained to provide the nice and friendly service to Trader Joe’s customers. Almost most of the people want to work at Trader Joe’s because they pay more than minimum wage and higher compare to other retail stores. New part-time hires earned $12 per hour and full-time employees earned approximately $50,000 per year which is above minimum wages. Plus, they contribute 15.4% of employee's salary towards retirement Saving. Furthermore, they offer good health and others benefits even to part-time employees (Ager & Roberto, 2014).
Publix serves over one million, mostly time-impoverished customers that are becoming more knowledgeable and demanding every day. These customers, who typically live in the nearby area for a generation, spend $5,000 on groceries per year, and many say they don't mind paying a little more to shop in Publix's customer oriented, clean stores staffed with well-trained and friendly employees. In addition, they are cost-conscious bargain shoppers who are turning towards store brands more and more. Finally, their customers are becoming increasingly more health conscious. About 70% of women and 54% of men consider nutrition an important factor in their food purchases (Mujtaba & Johnson).
Walgreens headquarters is located on 200 Wilmot Road in Deerfield Illinois (Walgreens Corp. Office), they currently operate 8,173 stores in all fifty states, district of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands (Facts & FAQ). With this many locations they have a large workforce, employing over 240,000 people (Facts &FAQ). About 30% of employees are healthcare providers which include pharmacy technicians, pharmacists and other heath-related professions (Facts & FAQ).
JC Penney is an American department store chain with 1,095 locations throughout the United States. In the latter half of the 20th century, shopping malls became very popular and most of the company’s stores were situated in the downtown areas, they followed the trend of developing more stores in the shopping malls to attract customers and increase the financial profitability of the company. Conversely, JC Penney had freestanding stores, and was able to get consumer traffic which helped the company earn a profit and increase its market share.
The company offers an array of products and services which appeals to a large target audience. From the weekend warrior to the professional craftsmen Lowe’s has it all. Lowe’s has just about anything to build or repair a home and even decorate it. If one were to go to the home page, they would see a long list of different types of products and services they offer. Some of the major categories they offer are appliance, building supplies, doors & windows, heating & cooling, home décor, paint, plumbing, and tools.(6). Not only can one goes to Lowe’s to buys just about anything needed for the home, but the company will even deliver the items to one’s home or place of business (7). They even offer free local delivery on all appliances costing
Businesses have to adapt to the ever-changing economy. It is not much of a choice for business leaders to change elements of their organization to stay in competition with their peers. The hardest part, most of the time, is changing the people in the organization to develop the necessary outcome or goal. As a business leader getting rid of people or changing their job specifics is one of the many responsibilities they have to be comfortable performing. Organizations have to take into consideration their competitors, customers, shareholders, employees, and the community to make decisions. Change is an aspect that many people are afraid of. In the new millennium, organizational leaders have to embrace
Bob’s Supermarket SWOT Analysis shows the supermarket displayed strengths with having loyal customers, customer service, and a POS System that helped them “improve both their sales and profit margins” (Parnell, 2014). Their weaknesses showed they lack having attractive displays, a marketing strategy, “limited advertising and promotions” and “attract long-term workers” (Parnell, 2014). In fact, Bob’s Supermarket has the potential to take advantage of many opportunities such as expanding their “products or services” (Matsa, 2011), utilizing innovations, re-branding their image such as making uniforms with name tags available for employees, and remodeling the interior, lighting and fixtures of Bob’s Supermarket (Parnell, 2014). Their threats
I agree with you. Kroger has a very good profile of every customer, or most of the customers who are the ones that use the Kroger member card when we pay at the register. They know what you buy, when you buy, what brand etc. Also with the app they track you in a real time when you enter the store. That way they know what island is the most visited and how the customer move inside the store.
ROCE of Sainsbury’s increased to 11.07% in 2013, is intensified by the increase in the net pension deficit, makes reduction of the capital employed. The consolidation of Sainsbury's Bank affected ROCE by increasing closing capital employed by £243 million of the year. Adjusting for this, it was increased by 19 basis points to 11.26% in 2014. It was intensified due to capital employed decreased because of the movement in the net pension deficit. Also, Sainsbury's had an improved underlying operating margin and the property pipeline review that made an impairment of £92 million which helped to reduce closing capital employed (London Stock Exchange plc, 2014).
In the retail market, data record inaccuracies forms one of the most important causes of out-of stock situation. This leads to decrease in revenue for the retailers. Again, the organizations have to bear significant labor costs due to the manual system of data transfer regarding product information. This leads to indirect effects on poor data quality on the supply and demand chain (Legner & Schemm 2008, p.21). Coles Supermarkets have been using barcoding since early nineties. One of the challenges they have been facing was with the manual entries and increased labor costs if a barcode fails to scan. Secondly, barcodes lacked real-time product tracking and this is extremely important for them, as the supply chain is vast in terms of the intermediaries and the locations from which the goods are supplied and delivered. Coles have suppliers within Australia as well as from countries like India, China and Bangladesh. Due to this, they were lacking best practice opportunities of factory gate pricing and reverse logistics (Coles Centenary 2015)
Associated British Foods PLC is a British multinational food processing and retailing company which was founded in the year 1935 by a Canadian named Willard Garfield Weston and from that date the rest is history. (Grace’s Guide, 2016).
Charles Lazarus’s creation has been in operation for over seventy years. Having first operated in the business by making baby furnishing in his father’s bike shop back in 1948, the founder of the Toys “R” Us chain of toy stores and infant care suppliers scaled from revenues of a few dollars to over $13.5 billion made worldwide (“Toys,” n.d.). A company that continues to have a strong presence, it had developed various strengths, weaknesses, and environments in its functioning. This paper conducts and examines a SWOT analysis of the Toys “R” Us company and addresses the possible actions the company may take in order to utilize the opportunities they have available to them.